Two-time world surfing champion Tyler Wright heats up surf fans with Australia Day post critical of country’s “genocidal history, “institutional racism” and “white supremacy”!

"No pride in genocide!"

The two-time world champ Tyler Wright has again fired up against the forces of rabid prejudice in a post denouncing Australia as genocidal, racist and its annual day of celebration a symbol of the country’s structural and institutionalised white supremacy.

For non-Australian readers, and for many Australians too, I suppose, who might be unaware of the date’s significance, January 26 represents the day in 1788 when eleven prison hulks from England arrived in Sydney Cove to establish a penal colony.

This penal colony has since become one of the world’s most stable democracies, free healthcare, school, and so on. A free-wheeling capitalist society wrapped in the loving arms of a generous welfare state.

For our indigenous brothers and sisters, the arrival of the European was a catastrophe, a disaster still unfurling two centuries later.

Ain’t no secret there.

From Tyler,

Jan 26th is Invasion Day. My fellow white and non indigenous Australian friends where are you all showing up for Invasion Day marches? If you can’t make one, how else are you showing up for First Nations people everyday? Lets show @scottmorrisonmp that there is No Pride in Genocide, celebrating on jan 26th is ignorant of our colonial and genocidal history. Unity comes after accountability and truth telling. Let’s hold each other accountable. Let’s all do better to dismantle individual, systemic, structural and institutionalised racism founded in white supremacy.

Apart from the usual high-profile groupies, rank and file fans weren’t so convinced.

Good or bad, history is history. I’m proud of our country, what it stands for and what we’ve been able to achieve. I feel this post is ridiculous and divisive but being a free country we are all entitled to our own opinions and we have to right to freely express our thoughts. Why do we have to apologise for everything? We should celebrate that there has been good and bad, but through it all, our country is an amazing place for everybody. I find it difficult to believe there’s systematic racism, everybody in this country has the same opportunities and choices and it’s up to you what you want to make of it. Happy Australia Day everybody.

Ill be celebrating Aussie day on the 26th January like everyone else should be. Yes I’m ABORIGINAL and I’m over all this crap about changing the date. History is history, move on and enjoy life. Cant change the past

Haha aussie black lives matter movement. Maybe it will completely divide your country like it did mine. Good luck virtue signaling just like the 🇺🇸

Thanks but no thanks!!! Love this Country for everything and everyone who is part regardless of Nationality,colour or what ever else you are!! Was nice following you but catch ya later!!🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

Very divisive comment, how about coming together like Warren Mundine is advocating

One fan asked,

Can you be more specific about the systemic, structural and institutionalised racism that you see? As you mention that this was founded in white supremacy, do you think white supremacy is a problem that still exists in Australia today? Is there another date that you would suggest for an Australia Day celebration?

And received this reply,

I think it’s more a focus on outrage, hate, division, blame and generally telling young indigenous kids that the world is against them. I’m sure Tyler feels good about the virtue signalling though……..

You’ll remember, four months ago, when Tyler dropped a knee at the Tweed Heads Pro for for four hundred and thirty-nine seconds in solitary with Black Lives Matter, the number representing “one second for every First Nations person in Australia who has lost their life in police custody since 1991.”

Tyler correctly raised the issue of black deaths in custody, something that’s been in the public consciousness in Australia since a royal commission was called in 1987 after a horror run of indigenous Australians dying while in police custody.

The result wasn’t quite so clear cut.

The four-year long Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody “did not find higher rates of death of Aboriginal people compared to non-Aboriginal people.”

And, now, “Overall, the rate of Indigenous deaths in custody has reduced since 1991, as of June 2020 lower than the rate of death of non-Indigenous people.”

Of 2608 total deaths in police custody between 1979 and 2018, roughly five hundred of ‘em were indigenous.


Surf-lit: “God, when did he stop striding and start shuffling? He used to run, sprint down this hill to check the waves. Used to.”

A dying man's last surf.

The old man shuffles down the slight incline.

God, when did he stop striding and start shuffling. He used to run, sprint down this hill to check the waves.

Used to.

Used to drive down a dirt track with a car full of mates, punk tapes blaring the soundtracks from surf videos, timing the hand break yank perfectly to skid to a stop just in front the wooden barriers in the carpark.

Then the mad sprint to be the first to check the waves.

Conditions in the little cove on the way in gave a fair indication of what you were in for, but until you set eyes on the little reef ledge, you could never be totally sure.

Resigned to the slow shuffle of the aged, but the old impulse to run, to sprint, tickles the back of the cortex. A Pavlovian response.

Mentally willing, but physically weak.

So the shuffle nearly increases a little in speed.

Still, a slower pace enables one to notice the details that are often missed with haste. The little circular grove of trees to the right? A generational meeting place for the area’s traditional custodians before whitey starting sniffing into the area chasing red cedar.

The wooden rotunda where he once found a local chef hanging from the beams early one new year’s morning on the way to a surf check.

The way the granite pavers laid so long ago don’t quite match the length of a normal step, making the shuffling even more awkward now.

The narrow track, fringed by coastal bansksias and low grass, opening up to the foreshore headland. The headland of a countless viewings and shit talk, story swaps, and debate on conditions.

He should have got married here, not in the church with the mealy mouthed old priest who couldn’t even remember his name during the ceremony.

His place of worship and devotion.

The sickies pulled from work, arguments and pleading and bartering with the wife to fit in a go-out when he just knew it was on.

Taking the kids diving the ledge when it was flat, showing them the best way to get in and out as their confidence and ability grew to joining him in the line-up too.

Hug the big round rock, and if you come in too wide, don’t try to paddle against the sweep, you have to go out and come around again.

Watch the crevice halfway out to the jump spot as you walk up, it’s covered in water, but it’s there, ready to be fallen in and twist a knee or ankle.

He stands on the edge of the slight cliff face, in line with the edge of coastal heath that never seemed to grow any larger, even after all these years.

This was his line of sight marker for the deepest makable take-off spot, adjusted five metres either way to allow for south or east in the swell direction.

Huge days, onshore days, grovel days, perfect days.

Days spent out there just to learn, to become intimate with the what makes the ledge tick, building the base of understanding that comes to be called local knowledge.

Days all now past.

His days all now past. Wife passed a year prior.

The big C.

The same evil shit now riddling his body. Considering how much time he’d spent in the sun, it was always coming.

He surveys the track down the headland. Dirt and winding, but not that far.

Manageable.

Maybe it’s time for one last go out.

One final session.

Eyes close, a few deep lungfuls of air, for a few moments in his memories he’s fifteen again.

One last look around at his place on earth.

He starts to shuffle down the headland to the jump rock.

One last go out. One final session.

This is the way and the place he wants to go out.

 


Breaking: World Surf League CEO Erik Logan uses Bernie Sanders’ latest viral moment to highlight own barrel savvy!

Very cool.

How good are selfies posted onto social media with the intention of getting praise hidden so poorly under a blanket of awareness-raising, challenge-accepting, meme-propagation as to be art in and of themselves?

I love the Ice Bucket Challenge and its extremely toned, shirtless men and women doing their part for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, any #TBT carefully selected for hotness though captioned “OMG, guys, don’t know what I was thinking here…”, influencers at protests…

… and World Surf League CEO Erik Logan hopping on to Bernie Sanders’ latest viral moment to, bald-faced, highlight his own barrel riding savvy (above).

You certainly saw Bernie Sanders at the recent inauguration, dressed in a Burton jacket, knitted mittens and face mask. The People couldn’t get enough and he popped up in boats…

…on the moon…

…this guy’s hands…

…and barreled at Surf Ranch courtesy of Logan.

Very cool, funny and topical all at the same time.

A selfie trifecta.


Springsteen (pictured) surfing.
Springsteen (pictured) surfing.

Glory Days: Iconic blue-collar troubadour Bruce Springsteen’s surfboard placed in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame!

Lines expected.

The mainstream media displayed much shock, over the weekend, when it was revealed that iconic blue-collar troubadour Bruce Springsteen’s surfboard was headed up to Cleveland, Ohio to be placed in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Surprise and consternation as highlighted by Microsoft News report:

Surf’s up at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

No, we’re not talking about a Beach Boys exhibit. It’s Bruce Springsteen’s surfboard that’s now on display at the Rock Hall, which reopened to the general public on Jan. 17 “with proven health and safety precautions in place to protect staff and guests,” according to a Hall press release.

The Springsteen surfboard is very bizarre and weird though part of other new artifacts, including a Cleveland Cavaliers rock-themed City Edition uniform; outfits worn by Harry Styles, Laura Jane Grace, and Jidenna, Maline Moye’s guitar, and more.

Etc.

What the lamestream media clearly does not know is that Springsteen and his E-Street Band grew up in the surfing paradise of Asbury Park, New Jersey, my favorite town east of the Mississippi, and let’s quickly revisit BeachGrit’s award-winning trip to the Home of the Pork Roll.

Brilliant, no?

And in any case, Springsteen who made his name at The Stone Pony, lived in a surfboard factory with many members of the E-Street Band and was even managed by Challenger Surfboard’s founder-in-chief Carl “Tinker” West.

“We were from Freehold and there wasn’t any surfing there, but it was the surfers who worked at the surfboard factory who got the band into surfing,” Springsteen said of those heady surf years.

Jeff Salmon, of nearby Ocean Township, is making a film of Springsteen’s surfing roots and added, “They’d go surfing pretty much every day of the week. Asbury Park, Long Branch – they’d be at the beach surfing and then go to clubs at night.”

Very cool and we, as a community, should be honored to count The Boss amongst our kind.

Do you have a favorite Springsteen song?

Hungry Heart?

I don’t know how you cannot like Hungry Heart.


“Reckless and disrespectful” Russian influencer finally deported from Bali for driving motorcycle into sea: “Time for you to learn that Indonesian people will unite when a person like you come to our country and disrespect our culture!”

Das vadanya.

A little over one month ago, a Russian influencer caused much consternation in the surfer’s paradise of Bali by driving a motorcycle into the sea as part of an Instagram stunt.

Balinese designer and politician Niluh Djelantik represented the general tone when writing, “You didn’t think of the outcome when you made this video […] Time for you to learn that Indonesian people will unite when a person like you come to our country and disrespect our culture.”

The Russian, for his part, responded, “I bought the bike, not rented. And we got it out of the ocean 30 minutes after it got there, nothing came out of there, it is not broken. We present it to the locals, they are already using it.”

It is unclear if the locals re-submerged the bike in salt water, the counterintuitive proper action, until they were ready to fix it.

In any case, Indonesian authorities immediately began an investigation which has just wrapped and resulted in the deportation of the influencer back to his home country.

Per the news organization baliprawara, “Immigration, finally deporting viral Russians because of dangerous action video by jumping into the sea while riding motorcycle. The deportation was carried out on Sunday afternoon through I Gusti Ngurah Rai Airport.”

The viral Russian expressed his love for Bali, and her people, on the way out the door.

Now, do you think deportation is the right call? Too lenient?

Too severe?

I studied Russian for a year and enjoy the Cyrillic alphabet.

Very cool.